Can anyone confirm that the latest (adobe-flash-11.2.202.238) flash player can still play audio on an up-to-date ~amd64 system *without* pulseaudio? All of my other audio and video apps are working just fine with plain alsa, so I really don't want to have to install an annoying unnecessary audio server just for flash. However, nothing I've put in my .asoundrc (nor deleting .asoundrc completely) has got any sound out of the flash player. What does it do differently, that prevents it from working with defaults that every other audio app (aplay, mplayer, vlc, audacious, audacity, quod libet and so on) picks up perfectly well?

Even better would be a decent FOSS alternative to Adobe's player, but I'm guessing there still isn't one (or at least not one that will play recent YouTube videos etc).

Can anyone confirm that the latest (adobe-flash-11.2.202.238) flash player can still play audio on an up-to-date ~amd64 system *without* pulseaudio? All of my other audio and video apps are working just fine with plain alsa, so I really don't want to have to install an annoying unnecessary audio server just for flash. However, nothing I've put in my .asoundrc (nor deleting .asoundrc completely) has got any sound out of the flash player. What does it do differently, that prevents it from working with defaults that every other audio app (aplay, mplayer, vlc, audacious, audacity, quod libet and so on) picks up perfectly well?

Even better would be a decent FOSS alternative to Adobe's player, but I'm guessing there still isn't one (or at least not one that will play recent YouTube videos etc).

why not? both at home (gentoo) and at work (kubuntu 12.04) without pa what so ever._________________Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former - Albert Einstein
ProjectFootball

Can anyone confirm that the latest (adobe-flash-11.2.202.238) flash player can still play audio on an up-to-date ~amd64 system *without* pulseaudio? All of my other audio and video apps are working just fine with plain alsa, so I really don't want to have to install an annoying unnecessary audio server just for flash. However, nothing I've put in my .asoundrc (nor deleting .asoundrc completely) has got any sound out of the flash player. What does it do differently, that prevents it from working with defaults that every other audio app (aplay, mplayer, vlc, audacious, audacity, quod libet and so on) picks up perfectly well?

Even better would be a decent FOSS alternative to Adobe's player, but I'm guessing there still isn't one (or at least not one that will play recent YouTube videos etc).

My ~amd64 Gentoo install allows for Adobe Flash to have sound without any trace of Pulseaudio on my PC._________________Linux. Freedom. Power.

Thanks, it's good to know I'm not wasting my time trying to get it working. I still don't understand, though, why all the other audio apps are working fine and flash isn't. I've tried reinstalling it...even downgraded it...no joy. If I download the flash movies, mplayer can play the audio with no problems so it's not a problem with the flash clips. My .asoundrc can't be misconfigured, surely, when other audio apps respond to it properly (they use two channels without .asoundrc, and all six with it; though that's not the problem, as I've tried setting it to channels 2, to the minimal defaults on the ALSA wiki, and simply removing it again...which still leaves the other audio apps working, but none of which does anything for flash).

My sound card's using the emu10k1 driver if that makes a difference. Hmm...maybe flash isn't...maybe it's ignoring "card 0" in .asoundrc and stubbornly using the motherboard's Intel audio regardless? I'll try disabling the Intel audio in the kernel.

Have you checked PCM in alsamixer? Flash(?)((Not 11.2 though, using 11.4)) has as good as muted my pcm a couple of times this past week while everything else (mpd/mplayer) was working fine.

The mixer looks fine to me (all the PCM levels are up high). Again I would have thought that if anything were wrong here, other audio applications would be affected too.

I rebooted into an Intel-audio-less kernel...no difference. @#$%ing flash.

11.4's not in portage (unless it's just arrived...I haven't sync'd today). I don't think I'll try installing it from an overlay or grabbing the .so from somewhere else or whatever you've done for your more up-to-date version...others here have it working with 11.2 so *something* mysterious is wrong with my setup. I wonder if it's firefox? Is there a way to test the plugin separately? Hmm...I'm going to make a new user and try it from there, just to rule out the possibility of dodgy settings in .mozilla or .adobe or some obscure config hiding somewhere...

Good point...I remember that used to block flash audio when it *was* working...but I can't see anything else using it now. Anyway, I guess that's another thing a test from a "clean" user setup (just startx and firefox) should rule out.

shows nothing...but I didn't expect it to...I'm running a fairly light desktop and I don't think anything's using alsa without my say-so.

Creating a new user didn't help: same results (other audio apps are fine, flash = no sound). So it's either a global misconfiguration that somehow hits only the flash player and no other audio programs...or it's a problem with the flash player itself or my build of firefox. I'm running out of ideas...guess I'll try another mozilla-plugin-compatible browser and see if that works.

Oh...just thought of something...maybe the flash player requires the old OSS emulation stuff, and my other audio apps don't? I'd better take another look at my kernel config...

[EDIT]: *sigh* nope...building the OSS emulation made no difference.

Is there any chance the plugin uses gstreamer? I don't use it, and I see it's an optional USE flag for firefox. Seems highly unlikely to me, but after that, I'm out of ideas. No...of course it doesn't...portage would have told me, rather than install a silent flash player. Guess I'll just have to download all my clips to watch them

Well...I'm tempted to add [SOLVED] to the post's title and conclude "no", but others have it working without pulseaudio so I'll leave it unsolved. In any case, I have sound now in flash...simply installing pulseaudio got it working, as I'd originally suspected it might. I'd very much like to hear from anyone who can explain *why* installing pulseaudio fixed flash on my system when apparently it's not required. ALSA was properly configured (all my other audio apps used it without problems) and so the flash plugin was the only thing without sound, but now having installed pulseaudio it's working properly...yet others have flash working *without* pulseaudio...so what is the pulseaudio server doing that makes the audio work in flash, that I could have done without pulseaudio? I don't like unnecessary layers of complexity so I'd prefer to get rid of pulseaudio if I can...however, for now it's the only solution that actually works, so I'll continue to use it.